She said crime in the gardens has been minimal. Beer bottles occasionally get tossed into them, and a prized watermelon was recently stolen. But local residents tend to protect the gardens as their own, she said.

Mark Kearney , center, leads a group of students on a tour of the Court Street Urban Farm. Mr. Kearney, who was in prison, came to the farm two years ago as part of the Greater Newark Conservancy’s vocational programming for offenders called the “Clean and Green Team.”

A two-day blackout for half of India was caused in large part by a massive theft of electricity.

A maze of telephone, electrical, and cable wires runs across a street in Delhi.

Modern urban utilities – power and water — are such tempting things to steal, because although everyone needs them (increasing our sense of moral entitlement), they are also delivered continuously, almost invisibly, by large impersonal networks that represent sunk costs and whose maintenance costs are invisible and “a slice off a cut loaf’s never missed.”

Over the years, I’ve written extensively about the apparent paradoxes of China’s economy, urban growth, and approach to housing.Each post has been its own puzzle piece – and some of them have linked together.Finally I’ve crystallized a theory of China’s current situation as a breakdown of governing principles that China has used since time immemorial.While for decades and even centuries these premises may have served China well, the modern world renders them untenable – and it is that effort to preserve what can no longer be maintained which is roiling Chinese society.

Three premises and their twenty-first century breakdown

1.“Nothing outside China matters” … but China cannot succeed except in a globally connected world – and the consequence is that China is burying money in fixed assets that people do not want.

2.“An imperial economy is a successful society” … but modern economies and cities are so vast and complex they have to be self-managed – and the consequence is that China’s cities are obsolete before they are built.

3.“Between observation and doctrine, report doctrine” … but markets, including information markets, will not be fooled for long – and the consequence is that all Chinese statistics are questionable and the economy is mismanaged.

Three premises to guide Chinese society

These premises find their physical expressions in China’s cities and its housing.Housing in China today is a massive industrial output not seen as any different from mountains of coal or miles of concrete, just another machine for living that will house the workers of the future.Hence the breakdowns we see today in China’s society and cities are not simply failures of local delivery, but breakdowns across the whole system:

The man who couldn’t be Chinese: Mark Kitto and his family

Fear of violent revolution or domestic upheaval, with a significant proportion of that violence sure to be directed at foreigners, is not the main reason I am leaving China, though I shan’t deny it is one of them.

[I am leaving China because I have] a justifiable human desire:

To be part of a community and no longer be treated as an outsider.

To run my own business in a regulated environment and not live in fear of it being taken away from me.

Not to concern myself unduly that the air my family breathes and the food we eat is doing us physical harm.

To give my children a decent education.

[Mr. Kitto’s words modestly reshuffled for emphasis – Ed.]

The China posts made me sad, as did the shattering of one of my few remaining cherished illusions when the New York Daily News, with investigative journalismof a caliber that if more common might restore the profession to some pride of place,revealed how badly New York City’s Housing Authority is run, with two posts, the first one observing that NYCHA’s performance has been Inexcusable, as in no excuse:

Any press is good press?

Many years ago, I became the volunteer treasurer for an organization whose previous treasurer, though both intelligent and responsible, was being roundly criticized for his job performance.“You’re doing a terrible job as treasurer,” the organization’s president berated him (or so I heard the story).“What do you mean?” he replied in outrage and bewilderment.“I’m not doing anything!”

The New York City Housing Authority and its board members have failed to spend nearly $1 billion that it has been hoarding since 2009 to make life more livable for the 400,000 residents of its 334 developments, the Daily News has learned.

The counting — which began in January and is now 52% complete — is expected to end by October.

Got that?It has taken NYCHA seven months to count what it has.This is worse than inexcusable, it’s outrageous.

Seven months ago, I didn’t even exist, and look at the progress I’ve made

Rhea said he’s confident the new system will save millions of dollars by eliminating the time workers spend looking for missing parts, and by ensuring the entire authority knows what supplies it has.

What new system, Mr. Chairman?The one you haven’t implemented yet?

Making a tawdry tale even worse was NYCHA’s systematic evisceration by the Boston Consulting Group, performed to the tune of ten million buckadingdongs, which I detailed during September in When you can’t say anything NYCHA:

By rights, the sandbar we now call the island of Galveston, Texas, has no business existing as a city.Like Venice’s Lido, New York’s Fire Island, Holland’s Zeeland, and the North Carolina Outer Banks, it’s merely a long drift of granules temporarily perched above sea level.

This story caught my eye from a very recent Wall Street Journal (August 3, 2012) article that made little sense to me when I read it and that proved, on further exploration, to be shockingly simplistic and inaccurate, and hence to obscure the real issues.